Smartphone usage in India

Indian mobile handset market is expected to grow at 25% by volume in 2011. Of which, smartphones will be one of the hottest growth category comprising 6% of the shipments. 2.5 million smartphones were shipped to India in 2009 and 6 million smartphones were shipped in 2010. Estimates put a possible 12 million smartphone shipments in 2011. That’s a 100% growth over the year 2010.

With more than 20 million smartphones available in India, it is imperative for various groups to understand the behavior of India’s smartphone users. Nielsen has collaborated with Informate Mobile Intelligence to understand the behavior of India’s smartphone users.

Nielsen’s survey shows some emerging trends and demographics. The study is currently limited to two age groups. The age groups covered in the survey are 15-25 year olds and over 31 year olds. Whether the survey has forgotten then 26-31 year age group or the publishers ignored that group is an open question. Also the survey doesn’t provide a gender differentiation.

Indian smartphone users spend more time on the Internet than on traditional voice calls and SMS’s

Smartphone usage by Indian users

On an average Indian smartphone users spend 2 hours and 30 minutes with smartphones and 72% of that time goes into gaming, entertainment, and Internet. Traditional voice calls and text messaging take a mere 28% of the time.

Smartphone Usage pattern of 15-24 year old

The younger Indians prefer to spend most of their time browsing the internet on their smartphones with little time spent for SMS. Casual browsing of the phone like searching for contacts and setting alarms take 30 mins of the time for 15-24 year olds.

31+ year old Indians with smartphone have slightly different preferences. They spend less time browsing and texting when compared to 15-24 year olds, 31+ year olds spend more time on contact search and alarms.

The numbers provided by Nielsen and Informate doesn’t look like they are the result of a survey. The source refers to on-device metering technology used by Informate. Here’s what Informate has to say on-metering technology.

Introducing Informate Mobile Intelligence. Conceived keeping these very requirements in mind, Informate presents an entirely new approach to mobile consumer research. Unlike traditional research, which relies on a consumer’s stated response to a given set of questions, Informate offers detailed access to actual mobile usage.

Through its proprietary on-device metering technology Smart Meter, Informate captures real time and complete data onactual mobile phone usage. In addition, Informate Quest, our syndicated survey captures attitudinal data such as brand awareness, purchase intention, brand satisfaction and preference scores. So while the SmartMeter tracks What are the phone features used and When, the Informate Quest delves into Who the consumers are and the Why of their mobile phone behaviour.

The study further finds that data usage of 3G users is 44% more than that of 2G users. Despite Symbian’s popularity in India, a Symbian user installs only 10 apps while an Android user installs 19 apps in a month.